(Life's too short for crappy sheets)

Water water everywhere... (Reply)

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This week I started swimming again. A hundred years ago I joined a Masters swim team and swam fairly regularly. It wasn't unusual to do 6 or 7 k of swimming a couple of times a week. I kind of fell out of it and never got back.

As you may have heard me whine lately, I've been having a lot of problems with my joints. The doctor said that, effective immediately, running was out for good. It wasn't helping my situation at all. This did not hurt my feelings one little bit, since I have never actually enjoyed running, and I find it hard to do so I don't exactly do it religiously, but it's an exercise that you can do anywhere and it doesn't cost much to do it, you don't need much equipment and when I'm on a running program I find I tend to eat better. So what does a person do if they can't run? SWIM! Good for the joints, great cardio. Go swimming.

Tuesday was my first time back in the pool and I only got in about 2k. The children people who had been there a while got in probably 4 or 5 k. That's ok. I'll get back up there. It felt good. Tough but good. I'll go again tonight and see what happens.

In other news...

I had a message from a guy, Terry, who sails out of the club I used to sail out of with Thom. He wanted to know if I was free for a race on Saturday. This guy is a local hero. For as long as I've known him (about 15 years?) he's always been on the podium in the local regattas - usually first. If he comes in second he's annoyed. We chum around at the club a lot. I've sailed with him a couple of times before, but only once in a real racing capacity. (I just looked, I'm surprised I didn't post about it last year.) I raced with him once last year and he had me on the foredeck helping out another guy. We screwed up a couple of things. (I say we because that's the team thing to do. In truth, the foredeck guy was shit. But whadda ya do?) When I got home there was this message from Terry: "You were on a winning boat today....Thanks again... next time i wont saddle you with Ben...or you will take the lead... thanks again.. awesome day..." I commented about the screw ups and he said: "great recoveries though... I saw who did that:"

Getting a compliment from this guy is like... wow.

And now he wants me to go racing with him on Saturday. I feel like I've been called up to the "bigs" and now that he knows I have a clue what I'm doing I'm not going to be cut any slack. Yikes.

In truth I'm taking this all wayyyyy to seriously. It's the Rum Race (First place gets a trophy, second place gets a bucket of rum) and it's also my anniversary, so it's not like it's going to be like old times, but I'm still looking forward to it. Sort of.